The lamp is lit

To the guild,

The fleet came home at midnight. All of it. I counted the boats twice because I did not believe the first count.

I am told that your people did not so much fight the serpent as clean it. Barnacles, apparently. Nobody here had thought of that in three hundred years of lighthouse keeping. The harbour looks tidier too, which I assume was not on purpose.

Its mother came by the next morning. She was very polite about the whole thing. She left in the direction of the open sea with the small one swimming behind her and the small one waved. I waved back. I do not know what else you do.

There is a barrel of smoked fish on its way to the guild hall. It is a large barrel. I also have a crate of barnacles that your alchemists seem to want for some reason, so I am sending that as well and I do not want it back.